Activities undertaken within a pharmacy team’s CQI program are all done with the aim of preventing practice incidents. Risks must be actively identified, analyzed, and mitigated, and procedures must be constantly reviewed and updated in response. Staff members, regulated and unregulated, must be trained and possess the knowledge and skills to participate in these activities.
Pharmacy teams will use several strategies to ensure they proactively address safety considerations in their pharmacy, including
A safety culture depends on all pharmacy team members having clear expectations about how safety and quality concerns are addressed. To support this, licensees must ensure that site-specific policies and procedures are in place outlining each aspect of the pharmacy’s CQI program. These policies should be updated regularly – at least annually – based on learnings from reviews of practice incidents and close calls, safety self-assessments, and information obtained from other sources. Policies should be reviewed with all pharmacy team members upon commencing employment, and whenever changes are made.
For sample (template) policies and procedures, see ACP’s general policies and procedures manual template, located on the Licensee resources section of the ACP website.